Week 1: Introduction
In this first week, we will address some of the practicalities of the module, decide on our selected themes, and discuss preliminary issues thrown up by the introductory reading.
Seminar questions
- What (or who) were the 'social sciences' in Britain during the time period of this module?
- What were the 'social sciences' doing in this time period? Who (or what) was their object of analysis?
- What kinds of themes emerge from the reading that you have done?
- What kinds of primary source material are the historians you have read using? How do they approach them and whose stories are they telling through them?
- What does Mike Savage mean when he writes that ‘[t]he ability of the social sciences to cover their own traces is, indeed, one of their signal achievements’ [preface, p. x]? Based on your other reading, do you agree with this? What are the historiographical implications of using this material, if so?
- Who was observing whom in twentieth-century Britain?
Preparatory reading
- Mike Savage, Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: the politics of method (Oxford: OUP, 2010) [available as an e-book by searching on the Library catalogue]
- Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Class, Politics and the Decline of Deference in England, 1968-2000 (Oxford: OUP, 2018) [as above]
- Jon Lawrence, Me, Me, Me: the search for community in post-war England (Oxford: OUP, 2019) [ditto]
In the case of each book, please try to read all the introductions/prefaces (which are mostly short). Then pick your favourite book and read at least one other chapter (of your choice). (If you do want to read more, please feel free to do so!)
If you have time, please do also try to read one of these pieces (which hopefully will tie a lot of what you've read together):
- Claire Langhamer, '"Who the hell are ordinary people?" Ordinariness as a category of historical analysis', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 28 (2018), pp. 175-195
- Lise Butler, 'The social scientific turn in modern British history', Twentieth Century British History, 33:3 (2022), pp. 445-450
- Roslyn Dubler, 'The sociologist and the subject: two historiographies of post-war social science', Twentieth Century British History, 33:3 (2022), pp. 412-415
Further reading
Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson, 'Telling stories about post-war Britain: popular individualism and the "crisis" of the 1970s', Twentieth Century British History, 28:2 (2017), pp. 268-304
Plamena Panayotova (ed.), The History of Sociology in Britain: new research and revaluation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Matthew Hilton, 'Politics is ordinary: non-governmental organisations and political participation in contemporary Britain', Twentieth Century British History, 22:2 (2011), pp. 230-268
Matthew Hollow, 'Governmentality on the Park Hill Estate: the rationality of public housing', Urban History, 37:1 (2010), pp. 117-135
Patrick Joyce, 'What is the social in social history?', Past & Present, 206 (2010), pp. 213-248
[The Dubler and the Butler essays are part of a special roundtable in the journal Twentieth Century British History, and we will have the opportunity to consider more about the arguments presented here in week 10.]
